I've had an association with ARM Holdings since the turn of the century when I managed to enlist the help of their visionary HRD to sell the benefits of business transformation through employee engagement to a cynical bunch of senior insurance executives. I vividly recall him telling the Top 250 grey suits in the room that his organisation would not only become the UK's top tech company one day but that they would out sell Intel and that this transformation would be people process led. Very few listening believed him.
I remember being reminded of a similar presentation about a decade before when the Operations Director of a Japanese car manufacturer lectured the UK banking sector about Kaizen/total quality management and process control as a vital skill for continual business process transformation and service improvement. When a cynical "suit" snorted "well why would you share your intellectual property with competitors like this, if this was true?", he simply paused, sighed and eventually answered "Because I know that we have the business culture to move many years ahead while your business culture fights to take the first step towards catching up".
Ironic that ARM Holdings' new owners are none other than Japanese tech company SoftBank, who have bought this still humble English business, based in Cambridge, for in excess of £23bn.
I published a case study of ARM Holdings in 2007 in my first book on brand management, Brand Engagement. In the study, Bill Parsons, their HRD at the time, details how ARM has always been a people business first and foremost, flying in the face of the super geek stereotype. He talks about the importance of taking a systems-based approach to people processes first and foremost, ensuring that structures, performance management, communication and engagement mechanisms are all tied to core values and to cultivating the critical ARM culture. He cites this, not innovation alone, as a key reason why they have enjoyed such sustainable success and why they had more millionaires per head than any other UK company at the time.
ARM is a brand that few recognise and quite frankly they have never really cared given they are all about enabling the functionality of others, partnering for success. As a result, there is more than likely an ARM chip in the household if not on the person of everyone who possesses a smart device. They have built their brand from within, literally and metaphorically.
I am not the least bit surprised by the successful sale of ARM. I am a little disappointed that Britain has lost what I consider to be the most essential of its essential services brands, akin to the utilities of old (also largely sold to foreign investors). But what has made me smile is the fact that the business has been sold to a Japanese organisation, thereby echoing the limitations and evolution of the Total Quality Management movement from its 90s heyday.
I do take some satisfaction from the fact that the masters of TQM have had to look to a relatively small UK organisation for a very important piece in the technology puzzle, an organisation where process excellence has been matched by excellence in the organisation development field to deliver a brand, business and product range that has survived and thrived on the back of inspirational people practices.
Great, sustainable, transformational businesses and brands are developed at the sweet spot where hard business outcomes and goals meet enlightened, engaging and connected people processes. The best of the grey suited insurance and banking executives Bill spoke with nearly two decades ago eventually got this message and they turned around their marketing-led, floundering businesses as a result. But how many more laughed yet never listened to nor learned from a business that just became our greatest technology success story yet began in a cabin in Cambridge? Many more business leaders could and should take more than one lesson from ARM Holdings during these complex and taxing times.
